


Little Evil Mistress

by EmilyweepsforPilfrey



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Existential Crises, F/M, Gen, Teen Angst, explanation of the brooch, only took me 2 years, set pre s9, yes plural
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-21 06:10:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10679331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmilyweepsforPilfrey/pseuds/EmilyweepsforPilfrey
Summary: It's every parent's worst nightmare: their teenage daughter leaving home and running off with an older man. But the worst part, according to Missy, is that her daughter's run off with the Doctor.





	1. Doctor

**Author's Note:**

> So I started writing this after the line about Missy's daughter first came out. Better late than never, right? You get bonus points if you can guess which canon character Missy's daughter is.
> 
> Formerly called 'Letting Go' (because I temporarily forgot what I wanted to call it - that's what happens when you take 2 years to write a story, kids).

The vase flew across the room, smashing against the wall and littering the ground with hundreds of pieces of ancient Gallifreyan glass.

“So, which one of you ladies called for me?” the Doctor asked with a grin and a bounce in his step.

He strode into the room, oblivious to the scene before him. There he found his two favourite Time Ladies – not that he’d ever admit they were his favourites... well, he’d concede for one of them – at opposite ends of the room. The younger stood with her arms folded, fury in her eyes, although they softened at his approach. The elder lay curled up in a ball at the other end, quietly sobbing in the most dramatic fashion possible.  A battlefield of destruction lay between them.

“I sent the polite request for your company,” said the younger of the two before nodding her head roughly towards the other distraught woman. “She’s the one who sent the screeching and the nonsense.”

Unable to contain her enthusiasm, she reached out to hug the Doctor, holding him close and squeezing him tightly. She had missed him; she always did. He accepted the hug, begrudgingly, and patted her awkwardly on the back.

“I’m not surprised,” the Doctor observed once there was a suitable amount of distance between them again. Even after all this time he still didn’t do the hugging. “I believe there were some not so subtle death threats in there as well.”

“Well of course there were,” Missy spat from her position on the floor, uncurling herself slowly and slinking towards them. “How did you think I would take it?”

The latter part was directed towards both the Doctor and his young Time Lady friend and said with as much malice as she could conjure up.

The Doctor looked back and forth between the two, trying to discern what had occurred. Judging by what was going on in front of him, things were bad. Missy wouldn’t even look at him.

“I want to take you up on your offer,” explained the youngest Time Lady. “I want to travel with you.”

The Doctor’s eyes lit up.

“Oh the horror,” Missy wailed, choking slightly as she failed to keep her composure.

“You do?” the Doctor responded, ignoring his friend’s dramatic response. He didn’t have to ask what Missy thought about this. It was written plainly on her face.

 “It’s not happening,” Missy interrupted, stepping between the spitting image of herself, a few decades younger, and the man who always seemed to be at the root of her problems. “You’re not getting her.”

“But Muuuuummmmm.”

Missy spun around to face her daughter, fury ablaze in her eyes.  She was electric, wave after wave of anger rolling off her. The Doctor took a step back.

 “Absolutely not!” Missy argued back, her tone indicating that it was final. “Now go to your room and practice shooting those baby rabbits I got you for your birthday.”

The young girl’s response was to fold her arms, challenging her mother.  ‘ _Make me,’_ her defiant eyes said.

The Doctor knew this was a standoff that would not end well if it was allowed to play out. He had to intervene.

“Lemmy, give your mother and I a moment alone, will you?” he requested.

The young Time Lady sulked but relented. He always had a better chance than Missy at getting her to do what she was told, thanks largely to her infatuation with him. She gave him her best pleading look before throwing her mother a filthy glare and storming off. She would let the Doctor try to talk Missy around. He had always had a way with her. Luckily, for the ladies, he was oblivious to the fact that he could have both of them eating out of the palm of his hand with very little effort on his part.

“Teenagers,” Missy scoffed once her daughter had left the room, knowing as she did that the Doctor would understand. He had to nod in agreement.

“What’s the problem,” the Doctor asked, hoping he could help to lessen her worries.

“She can’t go off with you,” Missy said point blank. “I won’t allow it.”

She would give the Doctor anything and more just to see him look at her again like she mattered, like she was his best friend and he couldn’t imagine life without her, but she wouldn’t give him her daughter.

“You know I’d take care of her,” he replied, reaching out to touch Missy’s arm in a reassuring gesture, “like she was my own.”

Missy scoffed. The Doctor’s eyes darkened at her implication. He pulled away.

“Missy,” he warned.

She met his gaze and challenged him, knowing that she’d won and holding onto it for just that moment extra to celebrate her victory before she sighed and looked to the ground. For once, this wasn’t all about beating the Doctor. 

“She’s gone...” Missy paused and let out a strangled gasp, almost unable to even say it. “She’s gone... good.”

At this, Missy began to wail, sobbing into her handkerchief as if this was the worst possible news anyone could get. Once again, the Doctor found himself on the giving end of an awkward back patting.

“I tried to bring her up well,” she lamented, registering just the smallest amount of pleasure at him comforting her.  “I tried to do the right thing. I tried to raise her to be an intelligent, evil, scheming young Time Lady. I tried my hardest, I really did, but she kept getting these ideas of being good and saving people instead of killing them.”

She sighed dramatically before looking at him with disdain. “This is all your fault.” 

“Come on, Missy,” the Doctor tried to reason. “I...”

“No,” she argued matter-of-factly as if this was a debate over an indisputable fact. “It’s not my fault. I did my part. My only mistake was letting _you_ near her so you could fill her head with all your silly ideas of helping people and saving them.”

“Missy,” he started again. He just didn’t see why she was acting like this was the end of the world.

“And now she thinks she wants to be good,” Missy continued to rant, “all because of you. Are you happy, Doctor? Are you? Because, let me tell you, I,” she paused to wave her finger in the air, “am not!’

“It’s not the worst thing that could happen to her,” he countered, ignoring her questioning. “It’s not so unexpected; she is part hum-“

“Don’t say that!” Missy snarled as if he’d just insulted her in the worst way possible.

“She’s not you,” the Doctor said, reaching out for her again and stepping closer. “Like it or not, she is not a completely identical copy of you.”

“She was supposed to be,” Missy argued, dabbing at her tears as she did. “My Little Evil Mistress. My daughter. My heir. My little ball of evil. My tiny baby psychopath. My mini me-“

“But she’s not,” the Doctor cut in, his voice soft, trying to soothe her.

“My failure,” Missy spat.

“Don’t,” said the Doctor. She didn’t mean it. He didn’t want her to.

“I should have destroyed her when I had the chance,” she continued, her words coming from that angry place in her heart.

A part of the Doctor didn’t want to believe her, didn’t want to believe that she meant it, but deep down he knew that there was nothing she could ever say or do, no matter how evil or cruel, that would ever surprise him.  For some reason, he still cared for her anyway. He couldn't help it. 

 “You know why she wants to travel with you,” Missy cautioned, switching tactics.

“The same reason you keep trying to kill me,” the Doctor accused bluntly.

He knew. He was oblivious to many things, but not this. It had taken him a while, centuries and centuries, but after a fair few kisses, countless attempts on his life and a very observant companion, he had figured out why Missy did the things she did to him.

 “It’s just an absurd teenage crush,” Missy retorted, brushing off his accusation. “We time ladies should be above such things.”

“She’s not you,” he repeated. He wasn’t sure if he meant it as a confirmation of their differences or as a reassurance that the young girl did not suffer the same extreme infatuation for a certain Time Lord that her mother did.

Missy glared at him a little harder.

“And you know I’d never...” he stumbled over his words, wishing he could get his intentions out with some degree of eloquence. “I’d never do... I mean... Look at me.”

Crushes and flirting with pretty, young women were for another time, another face. He had other priorities. Besides, this face had more dignified tastes.

“Mum, please let me go,” the young Time Lady interrupted, sneaking up silently and unannounced. “You can’t stop me. Don’t make this difficult. I don’t want it to be like that.”

“Little Evil Miss, you are the Princess of Evil,” Missy said in a last attempt to stop her daughter from leaving.  “You are meant for so much more than this. You could have the universe, rule it. I can give it all to you.”

“I don’t want to rule the universe,” she replied quietly. “I just want to see it.”

Missy deliberately avoided the Doctor’s gaze. It was wrong. All wrong.

“Mummy,” she called softly, sounding very much like the young girl she was. “Say something nice, Mummy. Please?”

“You never had it in you,” Missy accused, spitting out each insult like it was an arrow to a heart. “You’re contaminated. A hybrid. Tainted.”

Her face fell a little more with each of her mother’s words. Then she felt something rise up inside her. She steeled herself, squaring off her shoulders and let a mask of indifference sweep over her features. She had to rip the bandaid off.

“I’m sorry, Mum,” she said, stepping forward to kiss Missy softly on the cheek. She knew her mother’s words were coming from a place of hurt, not wholly hate.  “I hope you can understand some day.”

The Mistress’ face remained stony as she watched her daughter, her own DNA, walk towards the Doctor’s TARDIS. Then, second by second, millimetre by millimetre, her expression began to slip and the hurt took over.

“You could come with us, you know,” the Doctor said in an attempt to ease her pain. “I think Lem would like it.”

He couldn’t stand to see her looking like that. Alone. Defeated. Lost.

“I know this really nice planet with a quaint little tea shop that you would just lo...” he trailed off; her woeful expression told him everything he needed to know.

“I can’t play by your rules, Doctor,” she said forlornly. “You know that.”

“The offer’s always open.”

 He turned to walk away, knowing his new companion was probably ready to leave and his old friend was a lost cause. His hearts were heavy with many regrets.

With his back to her, he didn’t see her face crack.

“Please, Doctor,” Missy begged, rushing after him and clutching at his jacket as he turned, falling to her knees in front of him. “Please don’t take my daughter from me.”

“I’m not taking her from you,” the Doctor said, wishing that things between them weren’t always so painful. For both of them.  “I’m helping her to become the person she wants to be.”

He didn’t bother saying that she should be providing the same support. The time had come to leave.

“You always were the worst friend,” she accused to his retreating back. 

He didn’t deny it.

“I’ll never forgive you for this,” she yelled.

“I know,” he whispered.

He didn’t turn back to her again. He couldn’t.


	2. Missy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor seeks out Missy to give her some bad news.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, some housekeeping: 
> 
> Firstly, there's been a name change because I finally remembered what I wanted to call this.   
> Secondly, I changed up a couple of things in chapter 1 (it's probably best to reread it).

_“Don’t forget to check for Daleks under her bed,” she had called, defeated, as he stepped into his TARDIS._

_“Her bedtime is 9.30,” she had said as the doors closed and her eyes welled up with tears._

_“And she likes to be sung to when she wakes up,” she had reminded the closed doors, realising just what she was losing._

_“She likes apple pie for breakfast,” she had offered softly as she watched the TARDIS and waited for the inevitable. She hoped he would take care of her and keep her safe. She wasn’t foolish enough to hope too hard._

_“Make sure she does her homework. She might need a bit of help with the circular Gallifreyan,” she had called in vain. There was so much her daughter still needed her for. She wasn’t ready to go off into the world by herself, especially not with the Doctor._

_“And she doesn’t like killing the baby ones,” she murmured, slumping to the ground as the TARDIS dematerialised, slowly trailing off, “so don’t make her kill...too... many...”_

 

...

Years passed without the two old friends meeting again. In their lives, it was a short time, but it hurt all the same. A year can seem like a lifetime for the lonely. 

When the Doctor finally returned, his head hung and his hearts full of melancholy, he half expected her to be waiting for him with an army. Instead he found her sitting in atop a building, legs spread haphazardly in front of her. He saw that look in her eyes again: defeat. He sat down beside her without a word, grunting slightly as he did so. They sat. They were silent. 

It was a sign of how well they knew each other that they were able to share so much without a single word uttered between them.

He knew she was angry. He knew she was lonely and once again it was his fault. He knew she was hurt. He knew she’d probably burnt out a thousand suns, obliterated galaxies off the face of the universe and it still didn’t even come close to comparing to the heartbreak she felt inside. They hurt the same, the Doctor and the Master. The difference was in how they handled it. He retreated and hid away under the blanket of his pain. She would charge forwards and make anyone who was unlucky enough to cross her path hurt as much as she did, he thought.

But then sometimes she surprised him. She wasn’t attacking now. She’d surrendered, to her grief, to him, to the inevitable. Sometimes it was too easy for him to forget that her hearts broke just like his. He hated himself for it.  

 “You know, I was taking over this wee planet – I’d just assassinated the President - and then I thought ‘why bother?’ Why bother, Doctor? They’ll all just bore me eventually.” 

The Doctor remained silent. In his thousands of years of knowing her, he had never seen her so dejected before. She needed a challenge. She needed him. She needed her daughter back. He regretted that he couldn’t give her what she needed. 

As he sat beside her, he knew he’d broken her. He wanted to reach out with a comforting hand, but he felt that if he touched her she might crack and crumble under his fingers. He may have caused her more than a lifetime’s worth of pain over the years and contributed to the condition of the despondent woman before him, but he couldn’t deal the final blow. Sometimes she wished he would. _Coward._

Maybe the sweetest victory of all would be to finally make him kill her. Make him hurt like he hurt her.

She didn’t even need to mention his name for him to know that he had indirectly caused her to feel like this. He’d hurt her again. It was no consolation to say that seeing her like this hurt him too.  The two of them, they hurt each other often, but in the end they always ended up hurting themselves the most. When they hurt each other, the pain seemed to reflect back on themselves tenfold, saying, “Look at you. Look at what you did.” It disgusted the Doctor, the hurt he was capable of inflicting. He’d taken down dictatorships that had caused less pain than he had. He’d taken lives for less. At the end of the day, the only monster was the one in the mirror.

“Oh honestly, Doctor, just kill me already. It’d be less painful than watching you struggle with your moral righteousness all day,” she blurted out.

The Doctor’s eyes widened, frozen silent in shock. It was almost as if she’d been invading his thoughts again. He wished he could say she was just saying this to get to him, but he felt like there was truth behind her words.  But there was a spark that gave him hope, just a tiny spec of hope. She was trying to hurt him. She’d always had a direct line to his hearts.  She hadn’t completely given up. But it didn’t ease the guilt inside.

“Well go on then,” she said bluntly, breaking the silence. “Tell me how she was offed.” 

“I...how...” the Doctor spluttered. 

“You wouldn’t be here, alone, with that guilt written all over your face if she was still around,” she explained. “That’s your ‘just got another companion killed’ look, so I’ll ask again: how was my daughter killed?” 

“Dalek attack,” he said, believing it was best to just get it out. 

Missy hissed. 

“Those bastards.” 

“You should have seen her. She took down 7 of them before...” he trailed off, wishing that he could have come baring better news, anything other than this.  

“That’s my girl,” Missy whispered forlornly. She would deny that a tear rolled down her cheek at this point. 

Silence fell over them again, both thinking of their fond memories with the young Time Lady. 

“Do you know what her first word was?” Missy asked out of the blue. 

“Doctor?” he guessed.  It was worth a shot. 

Missy scoffed. “Always the egotist. No, her first word was ‘nice’. I always assumed that I’d taught her well and she was trying to practice telling people to say something nice, but now I have to wonder if she was talking about herself.”

The Doctor took a moment to contemplate this.

“You were her second word,” she finally admitted.”She had a poster of you in her bedroom, you know. She was always infatuated with you – I don’t know where she got it from. Always talking about you and asking for stories about you and nagging to see you again. Then after you left she’d talk and talk and talk about you and ask when you were coming to visit again. It’s no wonder that she went off with you as soon as you asked.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said. He meant it.

“You’re a cruel man,” Missy stated bluntly. 

“I know,” the Doctor agreed. 

“But you don’t enjoy it like I do,” she continued wistfully. “Sometimes I wonder if that makes you even worse than me.” 

He didn’t disagree with her. Maybe it did. 

“She asked me to give you this,” he said, producing a brooch from his pocket and placing it in her hand.

“What is it?” Missy scoffed sceptically. Surely she had raised her daughter better than to give out sentimental junk in her dying moments. 

“She got it from a market on Kerberos,” the Doctor recalled softly. “Well stole it would be more accurate. There’s some Plutonian legend that goes with it. It’s supposed to keep the wearer safe. She said she saw it and thought of you, wanted you to have it.” 

Despite her views on the matter, Missy found her hearts being warmed. 

“Well it would have been nice of her to bring it to me herself,” she muttered. 

“She wanted to,” he replied. “She just didn’t know how to come back.”

Missy remained silent in contemplation. 

“She’s more like you than you think,” the Doctor admitted. “It was always a struggle for her to be good.”

He fell silent, wondering if he should tell Missy the one thing her daughter had asked him not to tell her. Either way he would betray one of them. In the end, he couldn’t keep it from her.  

“She regenerated.” 

Missy’s head shot up.   

“You kept that quiet.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, finding himself apologising to her yet again. It was a regular occurrence and yet he didn’t do it nearly as often as he should. “She didn’t want me to tell you.” 

She didn’t have to ask him why. He could read the question on her features. 

“New face. New name. New life,” he explained unnecessarily. 

“Tell me her new name,” Missy demanded, allowing herself, for the first time since her daughter had run off with the Doctor, to feel a tiny spec of hope. 

“I can’t tell you that.” 

He would only betray her once.  

Missy probed his mind. If he wouldn’t give the information to her voluntarily, she would take it for herself. 

Georgia. 

Molly. 

Alfred. 

His mind threw name after name at her to confuse her and hide the truth. 

Clarence.

Tasha.

Geraldine.

Tammy.

Tasha. 

“Tasha,” Missy spat. “Nasty common name. So unbecoming of a Time Lady.”

“Half –“ 

“Don’t,” Missy interrupted. 

She sighed. 

“I know she’s only a clone, and a messed up contaminated one at that, but she really felt like my daughter, you know?” Missy lamented. “She’s the closest thing I’ll ever have to one.” 

The Doctor let his fingers brush against hers, turning to face her. 

“She is your daughter,” the Doctor said. “Ever since the day she came out of that machine on Earth, she’s been your daughter. She may be part human, but she’s so much like you. And she’ll always be your daughter.” 

Missy didn’t say anything. She’d always felt like she had some motherly love towards her daughter, but she still couldn’t shake the feeling that it wasn’t enough to convince everyone else. She was just her substitute. Her hybrid. Not that it mattered. Missy didn’t need validation to prove she was a mother. But she’d always wondered if the Doctor thought any less of her for the way her daughter came to be. He insisted he didn’t; she was Lemmy’s mother and that was that. There could be no stronger bond. But Missy still doubted him. Would he still have stolen her daughter if she’d birthed her the traditional way? Would her daughter have left if Missy had carried her in her womb instead of cooking her up in a machine?

“I still remember the day I first met her,” the Doctor said to shift the conversation to a lighter topic. 

“Well of course you do,” she retorted. “As if any child of mine wouldn’t make a memorable entrance.” 

“I was just minding my own business, parked out on the outskirts of the Horsehead Nebula, then this wee thing walked into the TARDIS like she owned the place,” he recounted, “pointed a laser screwdriver at me and told me I had 15 seconds to live and I should say something nice.”

“I did teach her well,” Missy observed. 

“Then,” he continued as if she hadn’t just interrupted him, “she looked around the TARDIS and told me it wasn’t nearly big enough.” 

“I suppose you were expecting the whole ‘it’s bigger on the inside’ thing.” 

“ _’My mummy’s TARDIS is bigger than yours_ ,’ she said to me.” The Doctor chuckled.

“Well, mine was always bigger than yours,” Missy said smugly. 

The Doctor ignored her. “And then you came walking in through the door and the pair of you just started giggling uncontrollably and suddenly it all made sense.” 

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you look as scared as you did then,” Missy recalled fondly. 

“I’ll have you know that pocket sized psychopaths can be terrifying,” the Doctor said, trying to retain some dignity. 

“You know just that anything with my DNA will beat you every time,” Missy countered, a slight smirk on her lips. 

The Doctor scoffed but didn’t deny it. It was nice to see her smiling again. 

“She didn’t stand a chance with you around,” Missy lamented again. “I should have kept you away. You were always trying to convert her and commandeer her away from me.” 

“Missy, you know I never meant to steal her from you.” 

“But you did it all the same.”

He couldn’t argue with that.

 “Where did she go?” Missy asked after a moment.  There was nothing malicious or devious in her tone, just curiosity and concern. Just a mother worried about her daughter.

“She said she was looking for a little faith,” he replied.


End file.
